حقوق مالکیت معنوی. عناصر ضروری برای صنایع دانش بنیان

This paper provides a broad-ranging review in a global context of many aspects of developing changes in intellectual property rights (IPR) in response to the currently rapidly changing technological and information industries. As such, it covers such matters as knowledge ownership, the IPR framework, TRIPS and WTO in relation to developing countries, technology transfer and balance in a world-wide context, and developments in dealing with counterfeiting and piracy – with particular reference to the Asia/Pacific region. Brief snapshots are also provided of a number of specific and significant IPR enforcement decisions and their implications. Further policy and practical matters also discussed include domain names and cyber squatting, traditional knowledge as prior art, bio-prospecting, and software patenting. Finally, a list of steps need to be considered in formulating IPR policy, with especial reference to India and countries in a similar situation, is set out.

With the world population approaching 7.3 billion by 2020, demand in priority areas such as food, shelter and health is on an exponential trajectory. The challenge for this century is to innovate with speed and convert the resulting innovations into utilitarian commodities for rapid diffusion in society. The drive is to evolve environmentally friendly and cost effective technologies that ensure conservation of natural resources, optimization on manpower and energy with simultaneous maximization of productivity. This will require concerted global real-time teamwork in the creation of new knowledge, exploitation of the cumulated human learning over the centuries and frameworks for sharing expertise, infrastructure and know how in a scale the world has not so far experienced. There will be newer ways of working and benefit sharing among nations, corporates and individuals, all designed to enrich the quality of life under the most demanding societal dynamics. One of the decisive enabling features in this evolution of a knowledge-led future, is the thorny issue of “knowledge ownership” that will resolve controversies bordering on “knowledge prospecting” and “knowledge piracy”. It is in this context of an appropriate and balanced harmonized legal framework to deal with the definition and fair transaction of intellectual assets that the success and survival of a “border-less knowledge world” will be determined. The various tools of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) were created to provide the take-off platform in such an effort [1] and [2]. IPR provide the formal basis for ownership of developed knowledge with benefit sharing between “partners in innovation” to create niche domains of “value added knowledge” and “wealth creation”. USA’s annual licensing revenue in 1997 was $20 billion vs $200 million in 1980. It may be noted that IBM in 1998 had 2658 patents registered in the USA as against 1724 patents in 1997. The company made over $1 billion through licensing arrangements. Similarly Samsung Electronics earned around $400,000 from its IPR in 1998. It is expecting to generate royalties of more than $1 billion from its MPEG2 technology. IPR are already a part of the strategic options in the knowledge industry. To ensure sustained growth, enhanced profits, market leadership many corporations have designed their project management systems for: • optimized use of inter/intra knowledge base; • strategic management of IPR; • external channels for knowledge and inventions as inputs; • internal expertise to manage research and collaborations; • clarity on knowledge ownership issues through mutually beneficial licenses; • pooling of IPR as in the case of several companies who have formed patent pools of their DVD patents for mutual benefits. The emerging scene in the future will seek positive linkages between enhancing competition in society on one hand (discouraging monopolistic practices) and establishing legal ownership of innovations (with enforcement of acquired rights) on the other. Strongly inter-knitted societal, moral and ethical issues are already influencing approaches to international trade involving technology management, ownership of knowledge and business processes.